4 facing charges in wake of drug sting

Updated 11:02 pm, Wednesday, April 10, 2013

The “drug connection” in Panama promised to deliver 100 kilos of cocaine to a boss for the Gulf Cartel for $871,500 with a handshake agreeing to a continuing business relationship for tons more dope.

The men cutting the deal for Miguel “Gringo Mike” Villarreal, the cartel's plaza boss in Reynosa, sent a group of cartel associates from Houston to San Antonio to pay their new Central American “connection.”

But when the money men arrived with loads of cash here, the cartel associates walked into a federal sting.

This week, the feds indicted four men related to the cartel here in San Antonio on charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine: Hector Gabriel Barrios Hernandez, brothers Luis Miguel and Juan Angel Hernandez and a fourth suspect who has yet to be identified because he hasn't been arrested.

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The case shows the syndicate once headed by imprisoned drug lord Osiel Cardenas Guillen is trying to rise to a prominence it once had before crackdowns and competition wounded it.

“They're pretty crippled, but they still have some infrastructure left and are trying to get back in the game,” said Mike Vigil, a retired chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's international operations. “I think some members still have contacts with Colombian distributors, but it's so fragmented that you have a separate component looking to establish (its) own sources in Central America.”

Court records show the investigation has been ongoing since at least August, as the DEA got wind that Villarreal had sent Barrios to Panama to buy drugs for the cartel, with $10 million to $12 million to spend on cocaine.

The DEA used confidential sources and an undercover agent to pose as drug brokers from Colombia and Panama, the documents said.

Barrios was told, the documents said, that the brokers were capable of transporting multi-hundred-kilogram cocaine shipments from Columbia through ports in Panama.

The “brokers” even showed him 50 kilos of cocaine, according to a criminal complaint affidavit in the case.

After seeing the coke, Barrios contacted his superiors in Mexico who agreed to an initial buy of 100 kilos at a price of $3,500 per kilo, plus $3,000 per kilo for transportation and an extra 5 percent fee — roughly a total of about $871,500, the affidavit said.

Barrios put the “connection” in contact with the Hernandez brothers, who delivered the cash in installments in October, using a Mercedes sedan with a secret compartment, the affidavit said.

After further investigation, the Hernandezes and Barrios were arrested in the Rio Grande Valley, and transported to San Antonio, where they are scheduled for arraignment on Friday and Monday.

“They're trying to compete with the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartels because both of those have massive tentacles into Central America,” Vigil said. “The primary countries those cartels deal with is ... Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The Gulf Cartel does not have the tentacles that those other two have, so they are trying to compete for a market share and looking elsewhere.”